[aklug] Re: recommendation for Android phone

From: Jim Gribbin <jimgribbin@gmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 15 2011 - 01:15:55 AKDT

I recently went to a Motorola (I guess now Google) Atrix. I have been
very pleased with it. It runs a dual-core 1 GHz processor & 1 GB of ram
making it fairly quick. The docking system seems pretty slick. It has
HDMI output to a monitor. It will take a 32 GB microSD card.

I don't know how standard a setup on Android based phones this is or
not, but the wireless (802.11x) is configured so that if there is an
access point around that it is configured to use, it will use it by
default rather than use the cellular Internet access. I have mine
configured to use my network at home, the office, and my favorite coffee
shop. Helps keep me under my bandwidth cap. I have been using it to
watch streaming TV & movies at home lately. My total bandwidth usage
last month was only a little over 2 GB, about 50% of my cap.

Last month was my 1st full month of usage and I was intentionally taking
it a little easy. The overage charges are a little daunting. Now that
I'm beginning to get a feel for where I'm at, I'll relax a bit.

I had to give up my grandfathered unlimited plan and go to a plan that
included tethering to be able to use the docking system. Tethering plans
on AT&T are limited to 4 GB.

It also knows about mDNS. This may also be a fairly standard Android
feature, I don't know. It found and configured itself for my network
printer w/ almost no input from me. I just told it I wanted to set up a
network printer and it asked, "This one?", and I was done.

The phone can also be configured to be a wireless access point. This may
also be a standard Android feature for all I know. Haven't used this
yet.

The latest version of Android, at least for this phone, even has the
VPN stuff compiled in to the kernel so people should be able to do that
now wo/ rooting. That version has only been out a short time, so I
haven't figured out the setup on it yet, but the option is there in the
configuration now. It wasn't when I got it.

I think part of the reason I can't say whether some of these things are
standard Android features is because the phone manufacturers have
figured out the "have it your way" feature of Linux. Android phones do
not have all the same features from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Jim GO
n Thu, 2011-09-08 at 07:56 -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:
>
> will be with Verizon. Which phone do you recommend? Why?
>
> Thanks,
> Bruce

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Received on Thu Sep 15 01:17:39 2011

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